Jordan Mechner (born June 4, 1964)[3] is an American video game designer, graphic novelist, author, screenwriter, filmmaker, and former video game programmer.[4] A major figure in the development of cinematic video games[5] and a pioneer in video game animation,[6] he began his career designing and programming the 1984 martial arts game Karateka for the Apple II while a student at Yale University. The game was a bestseller. He followed it with the platform game Prince of Persia five years later; it was widely ported and became a hit. Both games used rotoscoping, where actors shot on film by Mechner were drawn over to create in-game animation. Prince of Persia has become the basis for a long-running franchise, including a 2010 live-action film released by Walt Disney Pictures and an ongoing series of video games, published by Ubisoft.
Mechner is the recipient of many accolades, including the 2017 GDC Pioneer Award.[7] His works are often included in all-time lists of the game industry's best and most influential titles.[8] [9]
In 1993, Mechner founded Smoking Car Productions to design and direct the adventure game The Last Express. While commercially unprofitable at the time of its release, the game has garnered a cult following and is recognized as an innovative work in interactive narrative.[10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]
As an author, Mechner has written graphic novels in collaboration with different illustrators, including the New York Times bestseller Templar (2013), Monte Cristo (2022), and Liberty (2023).[16] In 2023, Mechner made his debut as a graphic novel writer–artist, with the autobiographical Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family. Replay was awarded the 2023 Chateau de Cheverny prize for historical graphic novels.[17]
In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.[18]
Mechner was born in New York City in 1964, into a family of European Jewish immigrants. His father is psychologist Francis Mechner,[19] [20] and his mother was a programmer.[21] He attended Yale University in the 1980s.[22] [23] [24]
While at Yale, Mechner wrote several Apple II games that he submitted for publication, but which were rejected. Asteroid Blaster, an Asteroids clone, was submitted to Hayden Software and abstract arcade game Deathbounce to Broderbund. Mechner then spent two years at Yale writing his first published game, Karateka (1984), which went to number one on the Billboard software chart.
His second game, Prince of Persia, was released in 1989 after more than three years of work. He wrote both games in the 6502 assembly language for the Apple II, though that system was in decline through the late 1980s, and little new software was released by 1989. Initially, Prince of Persia sold poorly, but as it was ported to other systems, sales increased. Eventually, it was adapted for about thirty computer and console platforms.[25]
Following the completion of Prince of Persia, Mechner attended film school, traveled to Cuba to produce and direct a short documentary film, and lived in Paris for a year.[26] During this period, he designed and directed the sequel, , released in 1993.
He founded the independent developer Smoking Car Productions in 1993, where he led the production of the CD-ROM adventure game The Last Express.[26] Smoking Car grew to sixty people, a huge team for the mid-1990s, and the game took longer to finish than anticipated. When finally released in 1997, it was positively reviewed but did not recoup its budget. It has since become a fan favorite with adventure gamers and critics alike.[10] [27] [28] [29] The Last Express was re-released in 2012 by French publisher DotEmu for mobile and other platforms.[30] [31] [32]
In 2003, Mechner directed the award-winning documentary Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story.[33]
He released the recovered source code to the original Prince of Persia game in 2012 and published his 1980s journals, detailing the development process that went into making Karateka and Prince of Persia.[34] [35]
In 2017, he won the Honorific Award at the Fun & Serious Game Festival.[36]
In 2001, Mechner worked with Ubisoft to reboot Prince of Persia. Developed at Ubisoft Montreal with Mechner as game designer, writer, and creative consultant, was released in 2003. It received twelve nominations and eight awards at the Interactive Achievement Awards.[37] Ubisoft has since published four more Prince of Persia sequels and several spinoffs, including the Assassin's Creed franchise, which was initially conceived as a sequel to Sands of Time.[38] In 2024, Ubisoft released , a new relaunch of the franchise, developed at its Montpellier studio.
Mechner became one of the few video game creators to adapt his own creation as a feature film, with Disney's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Mike Newell, and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, and Alfred Molina. The film was released on May 28, 2010. Mechner wrote the first drafts of the screenplay and acted as executive producer.
In 2003, Mechner wrote and directed the documentary film Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story. It won the 2003 IDA award for Best Short Documentary,[39] was for an Academy Award nomination,[40] and received its broadcast premiere on PBS Independent Lens in 2005.[41]
Mechner collaborated with a team on the 2008 Prince of Persia graphic novel. The author's graphic novel Templar was published in July 2013.[42] [43] Templar became a New York Times best-selling book and was nominated for an Eisner Award.[44] Mechner also wrote the graphic novel Prince of Persia: Before the Sandstorm, to tie in with the release of the film in 2010.
Mechner has written a screenplay for a film adaptation of Michael Turner's Fathom for Fox Studios.[45]
He has published two volumes of his game development journals from the 1980s, one describing the making of Karateka and the other focusing on Prince of Persia. He was able to recover the source code of the original Prince of Persia game he programmed from 23-year-old 3.5" Apple ProDOS floppy disks, found in April 2012, and posted it online.[46]
In 2017, Mechner moved to Montpellier, France. He has collaborated with European illustrators on graphic novels, including Monte Cristo (2023) and Liberty (2022).[47] [48] In 2023, he released an autobiographical graphic novel, Replay: Memoires d'une famille. He continues to write new graphic novels.[49] [50]
| Title | Year | Platform | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|
| Karateka | 1984 | Broderbund | |
| Prince of Persia | 1989 | Broderbund | |
| 1993 | Broderbund | ||
| The Last Express | 1997 | Broderbund | |
| 2003 | Ubisoft | ||
| Karateka | 2012 | Windows, Xbox 360 | D3 Publisher |
| The Making of Karateka | 2023 | Digital Eclipse | |
| Title | Year | Publisher | Collaborators | ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | A.B. Sina (writer), LeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland (illus.) | |||
| The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985–1993 | 2010 | |||
| Prince of Persia: Before the Sandstorm | 2010 | Todd McFarlane, Bernard Chang, Cameron Stewart, et al. (illus.) | ||
| Solomon's Thieves (Templar: Book One) | 2010 | First Second Books | LeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland (illus.) | |
| The Making of Karateka: Journals 1982–1985 | 2012 | Amazon | ||
| Templar | 2013 | First Second Books | LeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland (illus.) | |
| The Making of Prince of Persia | 2020 | Stripe Press | ||
| Samak the Ayyar (English-language rendering of the Samak-e Ayyar tales) | 2021 | Freydoon Rassouli (trans.) | [51] [52] | |
| Monte Cristo | 2022–2023 | Mario Alberti (illus.) & Claudia Palescandolo (col.) | ||
| Liberty | 2023–2024 | Étienne Le Roux (illus.), Loïc Chevallier (illus.) & Elvire De Cock (col.) | ||
| Replay: Mémoires d'une famille | 2023 | Delcourt Editions | ||
| Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family | 2024 | First Second Books | ||
Mechner married Whitney Hills in 2014. The couple divorced in 2017.[53]